Let us invent you a trendy new restaurant

Opening a restaurant for the first time seems so intimidating nowadays. You have to come up with a food that no one else has ever served before, and make it seem like lots of people want to eat it. Or, you could reinvent a common food, such as Jell-o, with exotic additives and strange presentations.

But most importantly, you have to come up with a cool name. You could go traditional and name the restaurant after yourself. Or, you could choose an official-sounding name that gives no hint that it’s a restaurant. If you really want to go bold, add a place that is nowhere near where your establishment is located, along with some Roman numerals. “The Kansas Lotion Boutique & Supermarket: Part IV” is a viable option. You’ll want to include fritters of some kind on the menu.

But our favorite restaurant-naming trend is one that has endured for years, because (we assume) it fits well on trendy marketing materials: Finding a one-word name that is either very abstract or oddly concrete and embodies the spirit of your food philosophy. Bonus points if the word is so commonly used that a normal Google search will not turn up your restaurant.

And if you’re worried that all the good ones are already taken, do not despair. Let our unofficial one-word restaurant naming department come to the rescue. We’ve even devised some groundbreaking new presentation ideas to go along, in the above slideshow. And, if you think real restaurateurs might do a better job with naming and concepts, check out some of our favorite Houston one-word eateries below.